"Free and loose" describes more than the spacious gardens on Eddie Woods and Willy Brown's Kentucky farm. The couple's approach to entertaining guests—dozens of 'em at a time—is just as laid-back.

Wild Things

Wild Things

Even by super-cordial Kentucky standards, Willy Brown and Eddie Woods are big-hearted hosts. On any given weekend, they open every single door at their 85-acre farm—in Stamping Ground, a tiny community just outside Lexington—to a sizable number of friends.

Turning their home into a getaway, however, didn't happen overnight. After purchasing land with two college classmates in 1975, Woods rented it out until 1990, when a woodstove fire burned the farmhouse beyond repair. Brown—by then his partner of five years—offered to help clear the debris, but didn't expect what would happen next. "I fell in love with the property," he says. So the two decided to buy out Woods's pals and rebuild the house as their own weekend escape.

In this photo: The glass house, used for entertaining and as guest quarters, opens onto a limestone path and cutting garden. Brown crafted the bifold doors out of old windows and customized the vintage-iron pendants with paper Pottery Barn shades and wire lampshade frames.

Glass House: Dining Area

Glass House: Dining Area

As folks continued to drop by, Brown and Woods began to carve out guest quarters. "I didn't want anything to feel stuffy," Brown says. "Each space is meant to be comfortable, so that people don't worry about spilling a glass of wine or damaging a rug." He fashioned the most striking new structure, a glass house intended for large dinner parties (and yes, a few more overnight guests), by painstakingly attaching beautiful old windows and glass doors he'd collected for years. "I love to put puzzles together," Brown says, explaining his design inspiration. "I take all the pieces that other people have given me and make something unusual."

In this photo: Topped with hydrangeas and surrounded by 1960s oak ladderbacks (plus one white 1880s chair), an antique French table awaits guests in the glass house.